In my opinion, no trip to Nepal would be complete without catching a glimpse of Mount Everest. If I’d come all the way to Nepal, I really had no excuse for not seeing the tallest mountain in the world with my own eyes. And so, on my very last morning (or what was supposed to be my last morning, but that’s another blog post) in Nepal, I woke up bright and early to hop on an hour-long scenic flight out of Kathmandu. I thought it was a fitting way to end my journey.
A hazy morning in Kathmandu doesn’t bode well for an on-time departure.
A fair amount of our mornings on this trip, especially when we were traveling from place to place, had begun fairly early: six a.m. or earlier, usually before the sun had properly risen. I consider myself a morning person, so I was pretty energetic on most days, but on that last morning, when I knew I’d be seeing Everest for myself? It was all I could do to keep my excitement contained to levels considered appropriate in public. Continue reading Mount Everest Put Me in My Place (And I Didn’t Even Try to Climb It)→
I’ve driven along some pretty terrifying roads the past few years. My heart rate has gone through the roof while whizzing through late night weekend traffic in Athens. I’ve woven through potholes on a motorbike in the rural hills of Lombok in Indonesia. And I’ve sucked in my breath and willed both myself and the car I’m in thinner when winter descends upon Aomori and the roads shrink down to bare single lanes, flanked by snowdrifts that are at least a meter tall. And then there’s the mountain road between Pokhara and Kathmandu. It definitely does not seem wide enough to accommodate two cars, especially with the huge tour buses and trucks that alternately trundle and race their way along the road. Three feet to the left, and we’d have plunged to a fiery death on the rocks and fields below.
If you say that you wouldn’t be nervous driving along that road, you are either the bravest person ever or a liar.
The Globetrotting Geek 